Page 40 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 3 #4
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Aslong time users of Optics Pro - since that detail was lost - lost so badly in some instances
version 3.5 - we have become accus- that whole areas of the images were indistinguish-
tomed to improvements in image able. It literally looked like an eraser had been used
quality with each release. Sometimes those improve- on the image.
ments are subtle - as in the move from version three Version 9 changes all that. PRIME - short for
to four - and sometimes the improvement has been Probabilistic Raw IMage Enhancement - is a dramat-
dramatic. Since version five was released, the im- ic step forward in the conversion of RAW high ISO
provement has been steady and significant. images. During the early beta for version 9, we were
When we tested the Canon 1Dx earlier this a bit concerned. Using PRIME increased processing
year we processed the images using a number of time by nearly 40%. But the release of version 9, the
RAW converters. We do that periodically because increase in processing time is negligible.
it is always good to know where the competition is. How does PRIME work? Well, keeping the
Most of the images we created with the 1Dx were de- physics of it as simple as possible, the rendering en-
liberately created at higher than usual ISOs. For us gine "reads" or samples thousands of pixels around
his is highly unusual since we "protect" the ISO as a given pixel to determine the probable color of that
much as possible in order to assure image quality. pixel. So, again, keeping it simple, if a single red pix-
Some of those images topped ISO 100,000. el appears in a totally black sky, it is likely that the
Though the images processed in Optics Pro color of that pixel should be black and not red. Clear-
were clearly better, overall, we were very disappoint- ly, when it comes to a line down the side of a moving
ed. Most images were so soft from the "de-noising" car, the process of determining which pixels are cor-
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